“Mom?  MOM!” Lauren screamed at the sight of Lois and Britney marching back into the living room.  She struggled valiantly to rise to her feet, but Ross once again blocked her attempt.

            Almost immediately, the terrified Alpha’s eyes fell upon the sight of her defeated fiancé clenched in her mother’s upright fist and held willfully at stomach level, and the tears began flowing anew down her reddened cheeks.

            “Lauren, please try to calm down.  I want this discussion we’re going about to have to be as adult as possible,” Lois said.  Her voice still trembled, and her eyes were raw, but she had managed to get herself composed again on the way back downstairs.  She took a seat at the kitchen table, with a room’s worth of distance between herself and her daughter, along with Britney who had followed closely behind.

            “Put him down NOW!” Lauren fired back, her chest heaving as she lunged forward again, kicking at her father’s restraining shins with full resolve.  Ross grunted and merely adjusted his position again to hold her back.

            “I’m not squeezing him, Lauren.  Do you see that?  I’m not hurting him right now,” Lois peaceably countered, brandishing Ian higher in the air to confirm this fact.

            “I don’t care,” Lauren howled, gritting her teeth as cold tears trickled down the crook of her neck.  “Let… him… go.”

            “Honey, the important thing to start realizing as soon as possible is that you’re confused.  Very confused.  And we just want to start helping you get better.  Do you understand that?” Lois insisted.

            “All I understand is that if you don’t put him down right fucking now, I’m leaving this house and this family for-”

            “We’re going to talk right now, one way or another.  You know I would never do anything to hurt you, but if I have to act on your behalf, for your own good…” Lois sighed, and chose this moment to give Ian a little squeeze in her curled fist that earned a strained gasp from the cramped Beta, causing Lauren to flinch as if she’d been struck by a hatchet.  “…then you know I would not hesitate to do what’s best for you.  Do you understand that?”

            “Mom…” Millie uttered under her breath, too stunned by this act to come up with any response as she cowered on the couch between the two divided halves of the family.

            “Lauren.  Don’t worry.  It’ll be okay,” Ian called out in shallow breaths, lifting his head from the coiled tunnel of Lois’s fingers.

            “You should listen to your talking toy,” Britney spat at her sister, although a sly satisfaction crept inevitably through her words as she leaned with crossed arms into her chair.

            Shaking her head and shutting her eyes to unsuccessfully floodgate the tears, Lauren struggled for air.  It felt like her lungs were vibrating outward with every pained breath.

            “Please.  Please don’t do this, Mom,” she gasped, no longer actively struggling against her father.  “There’s no need for any of this.  Can’t you see…”

            “What?”

            “Can’t you see how happy I am now?” Lauren begged, half-choking on the words.  “I thought… that was all you ever wanted for me.  You said that to me once.”

            “I did.  And it’s still what I want.  It’s what I want for all three of you girls,” Lois insisted with genuine fervor.  “But you’re still so young.  You don’t understand what it’s like to-”

            “But I’m not, Mom.  Not anymore.  This is my life.  And maybe I’m confused or crazy about certain things, but on this, I’m not,” Lauren declared, then exhaled heavily.  “I’m in love.”

            Lois sighed and lowered her fist toward the table, resting her forearm on its surface, but still didn’t release Ian.  Instead she resorted to letting her fingers idly loosen and then curl back in around him, rotating him in her fist.  She dug the fingers of her free hand into her forehead and sighed.  “Ross… could you… I, I just… can’t anymore just yet…”

            “Sure,” he said, turning back to his daughter.  “Honey, if I let go of you, will you promise to stay here, just until we’ve all had a chance to talk?”

            More bitterly resentful than she’d ever felt in her life, Lauren was far too dumbstruck by the sight of her mother threatening Ian with powdered ribs if she tried anything risky, so she swallowed and then nodded resolutely without looking her dad in the eye.

            “Thank you,” he said, taking a few steps back and sitting down on the coffee table, with plenty of room to block her again if she made a dash for the kitchen.  Taking a deep breath, the burly, softer-spoken parent made his attempt to break through: “I think what your mother is trying to get at here is that… there are certain things, as parents, that we have to try our best to do for you, to help you on the right path.  And when we see you’ve started to… veer off that path, just a little, it’s our job, because we love you, to try to-”

            “Why do you hate them so much?” Lauren challenged quietly, interrupting her father’s hesitant speech.  She was too mired in rage and fear to do anything but cut to the chase now.

            “Who?”

            “Don’t do this with me, Dad.  Don’t play this game.  Betas.  Why?”

            “Honey, this… this isn’t the time or place to discuss personal matters of politics, or-”

            “Actually, it’s exactly the time and place to discuss it,” Lauren shot back, gripping the sides of her chair violently to help prevent herself from launching forward with the intent of harming anyone between herself and her endangered lover.  “That’s what this is all about, and if you’re all going to lie to yourselves about it, then you’re all just hypocrites.”

            “Do you ever just stop and realize how insane you sound?” Britney called out.  She reached toward her mother’s fist and pressed a thumb to the back of Ian’s head, forcing him to stare straight ahead at Lauren across the room.  “Have you ever looked at this thing and thought about it?  Even for a second?”

            “Take your fucking finger off of him now,” Lauren instructed with enough coldness and murder in her irises that even Britney was prompted to listen and draw back, though she didn’t let how startled she was show.

            “I don’t… hate Betas,” Ross said at last with just enough truth that Lauren knew he, at least, fully believed it.  “It just makes me afraid for you to think of-”

            “Why are you afraid?” she demanded, returning her attention to him.

            “How is he supposed to… provide for you?  What kind of life could you possibly have?” Ross cut in.

            “We’re both adults.  We both have jobs.  Maybe I make more than him, but we’ve been getting along just fine,” Lauren answered with a wry, feigned grin.  “Maybe you didn’t notice, Dad, but I’m not a helpless damsel.  And he’s not helpless, either.  He makes more than some Alphas do.”

            “What the hell is she talking about?” Britney snickered.  “What even is he?  An itty bitty gigolo?”

            “Web design.  Even did some for Aegis,” Ian piped in, confidently but without getting loud enough to spark a reaction.  Lois’s fist seemed to recoil with surprise at being reminded of his presence, but that was all.

            “But… you can’t possibly have the time to watch him every single second.  Who’s there to watch out for you?” her father asked.

            “We watch out for each other, Dad.  Just because I’m the one who can pick him up instead of it being the other way around doesn’t make him useless,” Lauren said.   “And what?  You’re saying if Mom suddenly couldn’t reach all the shelves on her own, you’d just kick her out into the street?”

            “What about… you know…” Ross mumbled with obvious embarrassment, breaking eye contact again.  He obviously now was fishing for things to continue legitimizing his position.  “…if you ever wanted a family…”

            “What about it?” his daughter snapped.

            “How are you supposed to… to…”

            “You’re really asking me that, aren’t you, Dad?” Lauren simpered, and she could see a flash of genuine shame in her father’s eyes, this time directed at himself instead of his daughter.  “It’s not like it’s any of your business, but since the people I might’ve once called my family have decided to hold us both hostage for a little while, I guess I might as well, huh?”

            “Honey, you know that’s not what this-”

            “Dad, I’ll be honest, I don’t really know for sure what the hell is going on around this place anymore, but here we are, so I’m gonna play along, okay?  Do you see this?” Lauren rambled with a wave of her hands as she grew increasingly hysterical from the stress of the situation.  “When we’re ready to have a family, we’ll have one, just like you and Mom or anybody else on the freaking planet who wants little ones.  SIMPLE as that.  We might have an Alpha, and we might have a Beta.  Who knows?  Whoever they are, we’ll love them and let them know from the moment they can understand words that they are free to be whoever they want.”

            Another chilling silence fell over the room.

            “Dad.  Mom always told me she wanted me to be happy.  Do you remember what you would say to me?  What you wanted me to be?”

            Ross nodded, his eyes now glued to the floor.  His hands were folded neatly together.

            “What was it, Dad?”

            “Strong,” he uttered, his voice as well clearly shaken by all this.  He pushed his glasses further up his nose and then finally looked back to his middle daughter, a glistening in his eyes.  “I wanted you to be strong.”

            “And I am, Dad.  I’m stronger than you could’ve ever hoped.  Don’t you see everything I’ve done was my choice?  Was for me?  It was all so I could be something.” Lauren pleaded.  Her hands were now clasped together too as if in prayer.  “And I have become something.  Don’t you see that?”

            “I… do,” he managed.

            “Please.  Daddy.  I’m in love with someone who makes me happy, who can provide, who can raise a family.  And who loves me just as much.”

            “I know,” he muttered, then rose wearily from the coffee table and lumbered back toward the chair, but instead of moving to keep his daughter restrained, he only went on bended knee and gently took her hand in his, staring into her eyes with wretched pain.  “I know.”

            Though still fully engaged in an adrenaline-fueled survival mode, Lauren allowed herself a heavy sigh that caused a few pounds of emotional weight to drop from her shoulders as she watched her father surrender.

            “Mom.  Let Lauren’s boyfriend go,” Millie spoke up at last as she rose from the couch.  Her tone was soft, as always, yet forceful.  “Put him down.”

            “No,” Lois hissed to her traitorous family members, a wild gleam in her eye as she lifted Ian back from the surface of the table in a tightened fist.

            Britney, who looked beyond disgusted at her father’s apparent defection to the side of organic grime, breathed a sigh of relief to see her mother hadn’t lost her resolve yet in the face of Lauren’s weepiness.

            “Lois… maybe we… need to start calming things down a little,” Ross said over his shoulder.  “It’s okay.  We’ll talk a little more.  But… maybe you should put the little guy down.”

            “Oh God… Mom, do something!  Jesus…” Britney gasped hollowly.

            “Lauren, I love you too much to see you do this to yourself,” Lois sputtered.  The fist coiled around Ian had begun to tremble.  “I will not let you go down this road and become a pariah.  Do you hear me?  I will NOT.”

            “Mom.  Please let him go.  He’s… he’s a good man,” Lauren cried weakly.  “All we want is-”

            “I can see now I’m not going to get through to you with just words like I’d hoped.  And that makes me sad, but I swore I’d do whatever I had to for your protection, and I still intend to,” Lois whimpered through the furious tears, speaking over her daughter as she held Ian out at arm’s length.  “So we’ll just have to try a little action instead.”